by Dan Flynn

Accuracy in Academia's 2000-2001 Politically Correct Top Ten List shows that the campus thought police are more active than ever. From Berkeley book-burners to Ivy League newspaper thieves, activists on campus are increasingly directing what can and cannot be said on the grounds of colleges and universities. The results are frightening:

1. Assignment: Nudity For a final class project, two Berkeley freshmen walked around publicly in the nude. "It's a really open final project where it is OK to be naked," explained Andrez Guerrero, who, along with Binh Au, walked around the city of Berkeley naked for ten minutes. Their instructor, Morgan Bombscroodle, was furious-at the police for demanding that the students put their clothes back on!

2. Bell Tower Blues Grinches at Bloomsburg University banned Christmas music, and all other Christian oriented music, from the school's bell tower. "We simply can't impose certain beliefs on individuals," held interim director of social equity Bob Wislock. School spokesman Jim Hollister stated that since Bloomsburg is a "diverse community," banning Christmas songs was appropriate. "Our ultimate goal is inclusiveness," Hollister ironically claimed.

3. Fired for Dissent U. Nebraska Prof Jeff Johnson was abruptly fired after questioning a school proposal to include the partners of homosexuals in campus benefits programs. The school claimed that he was fired because of a sub-par academic performance, but all evaluations of him, including the "excellence raise" the university had just given him, show otherwise.

4. No Peace Pipe for Stanford Jokesters The producer of an annual theatrical performance at Stanford was fired after Native Americans accused him of racism for casting a white person in the role of an American Indian. Big Game Gaieties, a comedic tradition at Stanford since 1911, ran afoul of the thought police after it humorously lampooned racial stereotypes. Some people didn't get the joke. "The sign on the booth had crudely drawn pictures of teepees, bows, and arrows," complained an offended activist. Gaieties performers saw things differently. "Gaieties has always systematically mocked groups of all sorts: no one in particular is singled out, but by the same token, no one is left out," remarked Gaieties spokesperson Abby Phelps. "All Gaieties jokes are sufficiently absurd that they intentionally undermine their own legitimacy." Other intentional stereotypes included in the performance were Italian characters named Spaghetti and Meatballs and beer-swilling Germans dubbed the Lederhosen Brigade.

5. Criminalizing Dissent Temple University Senior Michael Marcavage sued his school in the fall of 2000 for violating his 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendment Rights. After hearing that there would be a school-sponsored performance of Corpus Christi (a play that depicts Jesus as a promiscuous homosexual), Marcavage organized a counter-event during his junior year that was to feature gospel singers, speakers, and a play that depicted Jesus in a positive light. Although Marcavage didn't seek to censor the play that he found offensive, the school did censor his event. After informing him that he would not be allowed to hold his event, Marcavage alleges that he was assaulted by university administrators who had him involuntarily committed to Temple University Hospital's psychiatric ward. Hospital records show that an administrator signed the paperwork to commit Marcavage but doctors found nothing wrong with the junior and released him.

6. Animal Lover From the man who proclaimed that killing month-old newborns is perfectly moral but eating a turkey sandwich is tantamount to murder comes the declaration that sex between humans and animals can be a wonderful experience. Princeton Professor Peter Singer called for tolerance for bestiality in an article in which he graphically describes an octopus performing sex acts upon a woman and men engaging in the marital act with barnyard hens. Of this latter practice, the Ivy League prof waxes, "But is it worse for the hen than living for a year or more crowded with four or five other hens in barren wire cage so small that they can never stretch their wings, and then being stuffed into crates to be taken to the slaughterhouse, strung upside down on a conveyor belt and killed?" All of this would be laughable if not for the fact that Princeton energetically recruited him, provided him an endowed chair, and houses him in its Center for Human Values. Why an enthusiast of bestiality, infanticide, and equality between humans and animals would be hired as the featured professor in a "Center for Human Values" has not been explained. Contemplating that humans, like dogs, monkeys, apes, and elephants, are mammals, Singer concludes: "This does not make sex across the species barrier normal, or natural, whatever those much-misused words may mean, but it does imply that it ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings." Speak for yourself, Professor Singer.

7. Doctored Diversity The University of Wisconsin crudely superimposed a black student's face amidst a crowd of cheering students in a picture on the cover of its brochure sent to prospective students. The doctored photo was an attempt to convey the impression that the school is a diverse place. "This was not an attempt-ever-to mislead," maintained Admissions Director Robert Seltzer. More than 100,000 of the 64-page brochures were printed. The cost to the taxpayer to reprint the booklets was $64,000. Both Auburn and the University of Idaho were also caught tampering with photos to falsely portray their campuses as diverse.

8. Book-Burners Against Censorship At Berkeley, home of the so-called Free Speech Movement of the 1960s, an angry mob shouted down Accuracy in Academia's Dan Flynn and held a book-burning. "White motherf-er!" and "You're a f--ing murderer!" were among the screams hurled at Flynn as he attempted to speak. One young man exposed himself to the speaker and later tried to rip the microphone cord out of the wall. Several other students threatened harm against the event's organizers. Others shouted anti-white racial epithets. After the event concluded, activists commandeered the remaining copies of Flynn's monograph, Cop Killer: How Mumia Abu-Jamal Conned Millions Into Believing He Was Framed, and held a Nazi-style book-burning-all the while holding signs admonishing others to "Fight Racist Censorship."

9. Penn State Gross-Out Penn State staged a November conference called "C-Fest" funded by $10,000 of involuntary student activity fees. The conference featured a statue of a giant vagina that spouted fruit juice and the screening of a film called Butt F-ing Bunny. On-stage events included a woman sharpening pencils with a pencil-sharpener inserted in her vagina, a puppeteer using her own breasts as puppets, and such advice from speakers as, "don't snack on a carrot after it has been in your ass." One lecturer described her forthcoming novel about a female serial killer who murders men and boys. The co-director of the event explained, "I don't want to name it that way, but [the enemy] is the white, heterosexual male."

10. Ivy League Theft Students at Brown University stole an entire press run of The Brown Daily Herald after it merely printed an ad by David Horowitz arguing that giving Blacks reparations for slavery is a bad idea. The student thieves had a considerable amount of support from the faculty. "If something is free, you can take as many copies as you like," opined Afro-American Studies Director Lewis Gordon. "This is not a free speech issue. It is a hate speech issue." A teaching assistant claimed, "I have talked to students who told me that they can't perform basic functions like walking or sleeping because of this ad." The students, who stole 4,000 copies of the paper, went unpunished by the university.